A departure from talking tech —
I went to see the new Michael Moore film, Capitalism: A Love Story at Nova yesterday evening. I hadn’t done much research on it beforehand, as I seeing it to help my friend’s fundraiser. Based on the title alone, I thought it was going to be a tale about consumer excess and advertising. It was actually about capitalism as the ideology that has dominated the US political system since at least Reagan. I found myself unexpectedly moved to tears by the scenes of workers fighting for their most basic entitlements after their company shuts down their factory, families “squatting” in their own foreclosed homes (in virtually completely ruined neighbourhoods), and a Congresswoman loudly stating her dissent in parliament.
The breath-taking hubris of banking execs reminded me of scenes in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, another doco I saw a few months ago. It was good to be explicitly reminded where power lies these days: corporations and their lobbyists. The democratic process struggles when the table is tipped. (Witness.) But you need to stand so far back to notice it these days.
I had a fleeting thought: “This wouldn’t happen if women ruled the world.” And then I immediately wondered if I actually believe that. It’s too hard to speculate, if it is just power that corrupts, and would equally so corrupt women, or if there is something testosterone specific in the way the world is run today. (I find it interesting that the first person in Enron to say internally, “Something’s not quite right,” was a woman.)
If we did have women ruling the world, they would have had to infiltrate power as it stands (unlikely in my lifetime) or at least infiltrate the political system and somehow try and build other power systems from the bottom up. And, well, currently I don’t think we hit them where it hurts. 87% of the community sector is women. Women are doing the caring work, but it is mopping up, not targetting the problem at its core.
I don’t really have a neat conclusion. The film was a great reminder to me of how major parts of the world work in a fundamentally unfair way. While it is tempting to do the mopping up, which is visible, immediate and necessary and helpful in its own right, I want to set my sights (and everyone else’s) higher. I don’t really know how to go about that yet.
If women ruled the world I suspect… nothing much would change. For evidence I’d refer you to Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s premier right-wing ideologue or Condoleezza Rice (spelling?). Both had significant roles in world affairs for a number of years.
Surely also quoting the percentage of women in the community sector doesn’t help your point. Incidentally, these women are regularly exposed to government in its various forms through funding bodies and whatnot. Rather the figure to quote is the number of women MPs (which reminded me of Julia Gillard as a women who helps run the world) and the relative number of ASX CEOs who are female.
If we are to “fix the system” then what we need to fix is the current economic blind spot of social good, which we don’t value and don’t reward companies for. Instead myopically promoting growth stokes bubbles or fraudulent behaviour (a la Enron). If we provide incentives for companies to say support extended maternity or environmental good practice then we can maybe feel a little better.
— Robert Postill · Nov 13, 13:53 · #
Well, I think women who manage to gain power in today’s world do it by playing the game, which is a men’s game. So I don’t think the odd woman in charge equates to women ruling the world.
I agree with your last paragraph but again I struggle to see how to get there.
— pfctdayelise · Nov 13, 14:21 · #